Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Andrew Breitbart, shares with us the Tea Party Dominionists' affinity for violence. ...and then cries victim

From The Ed Show:

SCHULTZ: …this is one of the most outrageous things I think I`ve ever heard. "We outnumber them and we have the guns." That`s a direct quote. That was right wing commentator Andrew Breitbart. It`s what he told a Massachusetts Tea Party group of people about their advantage over progressives.

Breitbart suggested that literal armed combat is the best way to go.

Transcript:

ANDREW BREITBART, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: And so there are times where I`m not thinking as clearly as I should. And in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, fire the first shot, bring it on, because I know who is on our side. And they know that. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war.

They can not win. We outnumber them in this country and we have the guns. So -- I`m not kidding. They talk a mean game. But they will not cross that line because they know what they`re dealing with. And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, thank you for what you`re doing. We`ve got your back.

They understand that. These are the unspoken things we know, they know. They know who’s on their side, they’ve got Janeane Garofalo, we are freaked out by that. When push comes to shove, they know who’s on our side. They are the bullies on the playground, and they’re starting to realize, what if we were to fight back, what if we were to slap back?

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Here’s a soldier, ready, willing and committed to fight and die for people like Rick Santorum for the freedom to spout their hatred for gay Americans, and Santorum essentially says f-you, go back in the closet.

Moderator: [former senator and presidential candidate, Rick] Senator Santorum, this question stirred a whole lot of controversy on line. It comes from Steven Hill, who is a soldier serving in Iraq.

Stephen Hill: In 2010 when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was because I’m a gay soldier and I didn’t want to lose my job.

My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that’s been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military

[crowd boos]

Santorum: I would say, any type of sexual activity has no place in the military, and the fact that they’re making a point to include it as a provision within the military that we are going to recognize a group of people, and give them … and removing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, I think tries to inject social policy into the military. And the military’s job is to do one thing, and that is to do one thing, and that is to defend our country. We need to give the military, which is all volunteer, the ability to do so in a way that is most effective and protective of our men and women in uniform, and I believe this undermines this ability.

[crowd roars]

Moderator:So what would you with soldiers like Stephen Hill? Now he’s out. When he first submitted this video to us, it was without his face, now he’s out - so what would you do as president?

Santorum: What we’re doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now, and that’s tragic. I would just say that going forward, we would institute that policy, period. That policy would be re-instituted, and as far as people who are in to it, I would not throw them out, because that would be unfair to them because of the policy of this administration. But we would move forward in conformity with what was happening in the past -- which was, sex is not an issue. It should not be an issue. Leave it alone, keep it to yourself, whether you’re heterosexual or homosexual. [crowd roars]

But we would move forward in conformity with what was happening in the past [DADT].

The hell you would! You'd sign an executive order criminalizing any LGBT person found to be in service of their country.

Santorum: the right to privacy doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, and that sodomy laws (Lawrence v Texas)properly exist to prevent acts which undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family"

The number of waivers granted to Army recruits with criminal backgrounds has grown about 65 percent in the last three years, increasing to 8,129 in 2006 from 4,918 in 2003, Department of Defense records show.

It has offered larger enlistment cash bonuses, allowed more high school dropouts and applicants with low scores on its aptitude test to join, and loosened weight and age restrictions.

It has also increased the number of so-called “moral waivers” to recruits with criminal pasts, even as the total number of recruits dropped slightly. The sharpest increase was in waivers for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the Army’s moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Keith's Special Comment covers the "four great hypocrisies" of the debt deal and the necessity of taking the governance of this nation back from politicians.

Transcript:

I close, as promised, with a Special Comment on the debt deal.

Our government has now given up the concept of right and wrong.

We have, in this deal, declared that we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all political incumbents are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Re-nomination, re-election, and the pursuit of hypocrisy.

We have, in this deal, gone from the Four Freedoms to the Four Great Hypocrisies.

We have superceded Congress to facilitate 750 billion dollars in domestic cuts including Medicare in order to end an artificially-induced political hostage crisis over debt, originating from the bills run up by a Republican president who funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to the military-industrial complex by unfunded, unnecessary, and unproductive wars, enabled in doing so by the very same Republican leaders who now cry for balanced budgets - and we have called it compromise. And those who defend it have called it a credit to a pragmatic president who wins some sort of political "points" because, having stood for almost nothing here, he gave away almost nothing for which he stood.

It would be comical if it were not tragic.

Either way, it is a signal moment in our history, in which both parties have agreed and codified that the political structure of this nation shall now based entirely on hypocrisy and political self-perpetuation.

Let us start with the first of the Great Hypocrisies: The Committee. The Republican dogs can run back to their corporate masters and say they have forced one-and-one-half trillion dollars in cuts and palmed off the responsibility for them on this nonsensical "Super Congress" committee.

For two-and-a-half brutal years we have listened to these Tea Party mountebanks screech about the Constitution of the United States as if it were the revealed word and not the product of other - albeit far better - politicians. They demand the repeal of Amendments they don't like, and the strict interpretation of the ones they do, and the specific citation of authorization within the Constitution for every proposed act or expenditure or legislation.

Except this one.

Where does it say in the Constitution that the two houses of Congress can, in effect, create a third house to do its dirty work for it; to sacrifice a few Congressmen and Senators so the vast majority of incumbents can tell the voters they had nothing to do with this?

This leads to the second of the Great Hypocrisies: how, in the same breath, the Republicans can create an extra-Constitutional "Super Congress" and yet also demand a Constitutional Amendment to force the economic stupidity that would be a mandated balanced budget. Firstly: pick a side! Ignore the Constitution or adhere to it.

Firstly, pick a side, ignore the constitution or adhere to it. And of what value would this Mandated Balanced Budget be? Our own history proves that at a time of economic crisis, if the businesses aren't spending, and the consumers aren't spending, the government must. Our ancestors were the lab rats in the horrible experiments of the Hoover Administration that brought on the Great Depression, in which the government curled up into a ball while it simultaneously insisted the economy should heal itself, when, in times of crisis - then and now - the economy turns out to be comprised entirely of a bunch of rich people who will sit on their money no matter if the country starves.

Forgotten in the Republican Voodoo dance, dressed in the skins of the mythical Balanced Budget, triumphant over the severed head of short-term retrenchment that they can hold up to their moronic followers, are the long-term implications of the mandated Balanced Budget.

What happens if there's ever another… war?

Or another… terrorist attack?

Or another… natural disaster?

Or any other emergency that requires A government to spend a dollar morethan it has? A Constitutional Amendment denying us the right to run a deficit, is madness, and it will be tested by catastrophe sooner than any of its authors with their under-developed imaginations that can count only contributions and votes, can contemplate.

And the third of the Great Hypocrisies is hidden inside the shell game that is the Super Congress. TheSuper Congress is supposed to cut evenly from domestic and defense spending, but if it cannot agree on those cuts, or Congress will not endorse them, there will be a "trigger" that automatically cuts a trillion-two or more - but those cuts will not necessarily come evenly from the Pentagon. We are presented with an agreement that seems to guarantee the gutting of every local sacred cow from the Defense Department. Except if the Congressmen and Senators to whom the cows are sacred, disagree, and overrule, or sabotage the Super Congress, or, except if for some reason a 12-member Committee split evenly along party lines can't manage to avoid finishing every damned vote 6-to-6.

We're cutting Defense. Unless we're not.

The fourth of the Great Hypocrisies is the evident agreement to not add any revenues to the process of cutting. Not only is the impetus to make human budget sacrifices out of the poor and dependent formalized… but the rich and the corporations are thus indemnified, again, and given more money not merely to spend on themselves and their own luxuries, but more vitally, they are given more money to spend on buying politicians, and legislatures, and courts, buying entire states, all of which can be directed like so many weapons, in the service of one cause and one cause alone: making by statute and ruling, the further protection of the wealthy at the expense of everybody else, untouchable, inviolable - permanent.

The White House today boasted of loopholes to be closed and tax breaks to be rescinded -- later.

By a committee.

A committee that has yet to be formed.

There are no new taxes. Except the stealth ones, enacted on 99 out of 100 Americans by this evil transaction. Every dollar cut from the Safety Net is another dollar added to the citizen's cost for education, for security, for health, for life itself. It is another dollar he can't spend on making a better life for himself, or at least his children. It is another dollar he must spend instead on simply keeping himself alive.

Where is the outrage over these Great Hypocrisies? Do you expect it to come from a corrupt and corrupted media, for whom access is of greater importance than criticizing the failure of a political party or defending those who don't buy newspapers or can't leap website paywalls or could not afford cable tv?

Do you expect it to come from a cynical and manipulative political structure? Do you expect it from those elected officials who no longer know anything of government or governance, but only perceive how to get elected, or how to pose in front of a camera and pretend to be leaders? Do you expect it from politicians themselves, who will merely calculate whether or not it's right based on whether or not it will get them more contributions?

Do you expect it will come from the great middle ground of this country, with a population obsessed with entertainment, video games, social media, sports, and trivia?

Where is the outrage to come from?

From you!

It will do no good to wait for the politicians to suddenly atone for their sins. They are too busy trying to keep their jobs, to do their jobs.

It will do no good to wait for the media to suddenly remember its origins as the 'free press,' the watchdog of democracy envisioned by Jefferson. They are too busy trying to get exclusive details about exactly how the bank robbers emptied the public's pockets, to give a damn about telling anybody what they looked like, or which way they went.

It will do no good to wait for the apolitical public to get a clue. They can't hear the clue through all the chatter and scandal and diversion and delusion and illusion.

The betrayal of what this nation is supposed to be about did not begin with this deal and it surely will not end with this deal. There is a tide pushing back the rights of each of us, and it has been artificially induced by union-bashing and the sowing ofhatreds and fears, and now this ever-more-institutionalized economic battering of the average American. It will continue, and it will crush us, because those who created it are organized and unified and hell-bent.

And the only response is to be organized and unified and hell-bent in return. We must find again the energy and the purpose of the 1960's and early 1970's and we must protest this deal and all the God damn deals to come, in the streets. We must arise, non-violently but insistently. General strikes, boycotts, protests, sit-ins, non-cooperation take-overs - but modern versions of that resistance, facilitated and amplified, by a weapon our predecessors did not have: the glory that is instantaneous communication.

It is from an old and almost clichéd motion picture that the wisdom comes: First, you've got to get mad.

I cannot say to you, meet there or there at this hour or that one, and we will peacefully break the back of government that now exists merely to get its functionaries re-elected. But I can say that the time is coming when the window for us to restore the control of our government to our selves will close, and we had damn well better act before then.

Because this deal is more than a tipping point in which the government goes from defending the safety net to gutting it. This is wrong, and while our government has now declared that it has given up the concept of right-and-wrong, you and I… have not, and will not, do so.

Good night, and good luck.

Since Liberal values preclude violence as a means to an end, it would appear that information -- transformed into talking points -- and the viral spreading of that information, is one of, if not the greatest weapon in our arsenal. But that requires a degree organization -- something progressives aren’t normally inclined to be. Unlike extremist conservatives who need to be spoon-fed their thoughts and beliefs by their reigning sociopaths.

At 25% of the population, an army of do-anything-for-any-reason “as long as I get mine” -ers, is a formidable force to reckon with.

The shite is already starting to hit the fan, and while things are still salvageable, I suggest we start organizing that information into talking points that STICK, and somehow get our pundits and congressmen to spew them forth with the intensity of water from a fire hose.

Conservatives already have this methodology down pat, it needs to be matched and outdone. Beginning with the education of the public that whatever conservatives say in regard to liberals/progressives/democrats, is usually, but unknowingly, what they are saying about themselves.

And secondly, the belief amongst liberals (even activists!!!) themselves, that these people can be reasoned with, needs to be squashed. There are a scant few who can be reached, but recognize when they will not so you know when to switch tactics in order to reach the lurking fence-sitters. Remember, they are the real goal.

To give a couple of examples of talking points that stick in your mind:

This recent debt “deal” has brought out the term “hostage politics.” “Hostage” is a perfectly accurate description of how Republicans have been playing the game since Obama was elected, but conveys MUCH more malicious intent.

And as far as water-boarding being “torture” goes, it should be explained that it’s torture because it’s the sensation of suffocation. Few people have experience with drowning, but many more -- at one point or another -- have, or will have some experience of feeling like you’re not getting enough air/oxygen, and the terror that accompanies it.

I have much more to say, but it’ll have to wait. For now, here are a couple of must-reads dealing with our nation’s current state of affairs: